News 2017

Scientists will investigate how fracking can affect drinking water and its role in earthquake tremors of the kind caused by shale gas operations near Blackpool, as part of a taxpayer-funded £8m research project. The programme, backed by the Natural Environment Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council, will examine hydraulic fracturing’s environmental impacts on land, water and air, as well as public attitudes to the controversial extraction technique. The funding green light comes as a key shale firm submitted its official plan for minimising the risks of any seismic activity caused by its planned fracking operations in North Yorkshire.

The G20 nations provide four times more public financing to fossil fuels than to renewable energy, a report has revealed ahead of their summit in Hamburg, where Angela Merkel has said climate change will be at the heart of the agenda. The authors of the report accuse the G20 of “talking out of both sides of their mouths” and the summit faces the challenge of a sceptical US administration after Donald Trump pulled out of the global Paris agreement. The public finance comes in the form of soft loans and guarantees from governments, and, along with huge fossil fuel subsidies, makes coal, oil and gas plants cheaper and locks in carbon emissions for decades to come. But scientists calculate that to keep global warming below 2C, most fossil fuel reserves must be kept in the ground, requiring a major shift of investment to clean energy. The new report by a coalition of NGOs found that the G20 countries provided $71.8bn of public finance for fossil-fuel projects between 2013-2015, compared with just $18.7bn for renewable energy. Japan provided the most at $16.5bn, which was six times more than it allotted for renewables.

Nick Butler: To no one’s great surprise, the cost of the planned new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in southwest England has been increased again and another possible year’s delay has been added to a project that is already eight years behind schedule. The cost could now reach £20.3bn – up from the £18bn quoted last year and the £16bn figure set in 2015. EDF says £1.5bn of the increase is due to a “better understanding” of the construction work needed and UK regulatory requirements. The French energy group is still hoping to complete the project by the end of 2025 but its statement issued on Monday provides a fallback by quoting the possibility of a further 15-month delay to the first reactor, which would take us into 2027. EDF’s comments suggest an inappropriate degree of complacency: £1.5bn is an awful lot of “better understanding”, particularly when the project has been in preparation for the last eight years. Prime Minister Theresa May’s review of the project last year confirmed that the cost of any overruns or delays would fall on the company rather than on the UK taxpayer or consumer. As a result, EDF’s margin on Hinkley will fall from 9 per cent to 8.2, but the company’s shareholders must be wondering how many more cost increases and delays there will be if the project goes ahead. Nothing in Monday’s statement, for instance, takes account of any consequences from Brexit or from rising UK inflation. Sorting out EDF is one thing. But the continuing failures and setbacks afflicting the EPR raise serious questions for energy policy in the UK and in France. New nuclear, led by EDF with several more reactors planned beyond Hinkley, has been at the heart of UK policy for the last few years. But the prospect of 16GW of new nuclear by the mid 2030s now looks unattainable. In France, the fleet of old reactors that will need replacement over the next 25 years is on an even bigger scale. But, given the cloud of doubt over the viability and cost of the EPR, what technology can fill the gap? The simplest answer would be for the French and UK governments to abandon Hinkley before any more money is wasted. That would require an agreement that no compensation would be paid in either direction, but instead serious money would be devoted to developing a simpler and cheaper new generation of reactors. That would avoid a complex legal fight in which only the lawyers would win and would keep open the possibility that nuclear could still play its part in the European energy market.

French energy supplier EDF has estimated that the cost of completing the new Hinkley Point nuclear plant will be £1.5bn more than expected. The company, which is the project’s main backer, said the total cost of the plant was now likely to be £19.6bn. Hinkley Point C would be the UK’s first new nuclear plant for decades, but has been beset with budget problems. A review of the project found there was also a risk it could be delayed by up to 15 months. However, EDF said it still hoped to finish the first phase by the end of 2025 as planned. Critics of the deal have warned of escalating costs and the implications of allowing nuclear power plants to be built in the UK by foreign governments. Last month the National Audit Office called it “a risky and expensive project”.

[Machine Translation] EDF foresees a £1.5 billion pounds increase and a delay of 15 months for the delivery of the first nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point. Over the last few weeks, threatening clouds have accumulated over Hinkley Point, the English site that will house two EPR nuclear reactors built by EDF. The cold shower fell on Monday morning: the French electrician announced an upward revision of the costs of the site and the timetable, in which he foresees a “£ 1.5 billion increase” compared to the initial estimate. For a total invoice now estimated at £19.6 billion (22.3 billion euros). And he believes that the project could lag “15 months for tranche 1 (the first reactor), and 9 months for tranche 2 (the second)”. This would increase the costs by an additional $ 0.7 billion. These cumulative elements will weigh on the projected rate of return of the project, which would rise from 9% to “around 8.2%” if the risks of delays are confirmed. For EDF, these additional costs “result mainly from a better understanding of the design, adapted to the demands of the regulators, the volume and sequencing of on-site work and the gradual introduction of supplier contracts”.

Electricite de France SA raised the cost of its project to build two nuclear reactors in southwest England, saying the final bill could come to more than 20 billion pounds ($26 billion). The estimated completion cost for the Hinkley Point C reactors is now 19.6 billion pounds, up from 18 billion pounds last September, and delays could add a further 700 million pounds, the Paris-based company said Monday in a statement. The revised costs “result mainly from a better understanding of the design adapted to the requirements of the British regulators, the volume and sequencing of work on site and the gradual implementation of supplier contracts,” EDF said. There’s a risk of a 15-month delay for Unit 1 — initially planned for completion at the end of 2025 — and a nine-month holdup for Unit 2.

The new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point is likely to be at least £1.5 billion over budget and could be 15 months late, EDF has admitted. The French company said that an internal review of the Somerset project, which was supposed to cost about £18 billion and generate electricity by the end of 2025, had concluded that it would now cost Â£19.6 billion but could hit £20.3 billion if delays materialised. The first reactor was at risk of being 15 months late, delaying the first power generation to 2027, while the second reactor could be nine months late.

BBC gave Paul Dorfman the last word in a debate with Tim Yeo (former Tory Environment Minister and key nuclear proponent).

BBC R4 ‘The World Today’, (29.12 into the programme) 3rd July 2017read more »

[Machine Translation] The announcement on Monday of an upward revision of the bill of the two English EPRs could be followed by other snags in the coming years. On the day of the signing of the Hinkley Point contract with the British authorities in September last year, Jean-Bernard Levy had this small phrase: “The hardest is before us”. The CEO of EDF spoke of gold, knowing nothing of the risks pointed out by the internal review he had ordered a few months earlier to his adviser Yannick d’Escatha before submitting the investment project of some 20 billion Of euros to its board of directors: unprecedented construction time constraints, demanding demands on the part of the regulator, inadequate project governance. “Risks are well identified and surmountable,” said Jean-Bernard Lévy. The essential thing was then to sign, after ten years of complex negotiations, a highly symbolic and political project. The then Minister of Economy, Emmanuel Macron, had put all its weight in it, pointing in particular to the Assembly “a profitability of more than 9% for EDF”. “So it’s good for EDF,” he concluded. Today, the examples given to justify the additional costs were in fact already debated before the investment decision. For example, requests from ONR (the UK equivalent of the Nuclear Safety Authority) for the ventilation of the plant’s buildings. It is therefore questionable whether the margins foreseen at the time of signing the contract were too short. Similarly, the new cost estimate at project completion incorporates “the success of operational action plans”. Kesako? These are actually savings and optimizations planned on the project, but they are not yet guaranteed or even identified. “Some action plans are in progress, others will be launched,” says one said to the electrician. At the end of 2015, the Escatha review already indicated, according to our information, a construction cost “subject to the actual realization of 2 billion pounds of savings that are only partially identified to date”. An amount that EDF does not deny, even today. These savings plans will therefore remain to be implemented. The hour of truth will not come before several years, when EDF and its Chinese partner CGN, who have already spent 3.1 billion pounds on the job at the end of 2016, will have begun to experience the British industrial fabric. This is a big question mark: Britain has not built a nuclear reactor for more than twenty years. And Areva, which is to build the two British nuclear boilers as a prelude to the renewal of the tricolor park, is not, far from it, industrially put back upright.

TODAY’S school leavers will still be paying for Hinkley Point when they draw their pensions, green campaigners said yesterday as EDF admitted the nuclear power plant’s building cost had shot up to almost £20 billion.

HPC demonstrates how far the privatisation of utilities has fallen short of creating free markets. There is no involvement in markets in the decision to go for Hinkley C. It wasn’t consumers who decided to buy nuclear energy; the government made the decision on their behalf, and committed them to this expensive option for 35 years. Moreover, the government itself didn’t even use the market to select a firm to construct the power station – it simply opted for the first potential supplier which came into its head, which happens to be another country’s state-owned electricity company. It is rather as if, rather than having a choice of whether to go the Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Waitrose, the government had decided on our behalf that we will all have to eat food bought in bulk purchase from state farms in Kazakhstan. At the same time, Theresa May is telling us that the market in consumer electricity prices hasn’t worked and that she will have to cap the costs. Unless the government can demonstrate that there is some kind of advantage from privatisation of utilities, the stronger public support will grow for the Corbyn option of renationalising them.

At the beginning of the year the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) announced it had received a request from the Government to commence a Generic Design Assessment (GDA) of the UK HPR reactor technology. This somewhat gnomic statement fires the starting gun for the China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) and its partner Electricité de France (EDF) to begin the long process that may ultimately lead to new nuclear power reactors at Bradwell, the project now known as ‘Bradwell B’. In a very real sense this feels like Groundhog Day. Years ago, nine years to be precise, when BANNG was set up to oppose the Government’s identification of Bradwell as a site ‘potentially suitable’ for the deployment of new nuclear reactors, it seemed clear we were in for a long haul, years rather than months. And so it has proved. We fought long and hard in every possible way to prevent Bradwell being nominated. We responded to consultations, held public meetings, enlisted supporters from far and wide, gathered signatures for a mass petition presented to the Minister for Energy, lobbied councils and MPs, pressured government and the nuclear regulators, provided press releases and articles for the media and assembled a carefully researched and authoritative set of papers. It is fair to say that BANNG has developed as a well regarded, professional and effective organisation. Despite all our efforts Bradwell was one of the sites nominated by the Government in 2011. For a while it seemed that nothing was happening and that the site was so low on the list of possibilities that it might fall by the wayside.

Ever since the fanfares proclaiming the Chinese were ready and willing to try their luck in building their own reactor at Bradwell, there has been a rather eerie silence. It is difficult to detect how far or fast the project is moving forward. Behind the scenes a lot may be happening or, again, nothing much may be going on. The truth, as always, probably lies somewhere in between. BANNG has made several attempts to prise some information out of the parsimonious team that calls itself the Bradwell B Community Help Desk. The two companies running the project in the persons of Mr. Zhu Minhong, General Manager of CGN, and Mr. Humphrey Cadoux- Hudson, Managing Director of EDF Energy New Build, have proclaimed that they welcome inquiries and public participation. In this spirit of openness and participation we have directed our inquiries to Messrs. Minhong and Cadoux-Hudson but we are always met with the same prevarication conveyed by the Bradwell B Project Team. We are told ‘it would be premature to enter discussions at this juncture’. While participation will be welcomed, to borrow a phrase, now is not the time. What is there to hide? We have asked for some basic information such as how many reactors will be built, what methods will be used to provide cooling water, what are the outline plans for managing radioactive waste, especially spent fuel, on the site and what proposals are under consideration for mitigating environmental impacts? It seems, to us, inconceivable that information on these matters cannot be vouchsafed. But, we have been fobbed off by the claim that the project is at the very earliest stages, meaning that no proposals have yet been produced.

Do we want to risk man made seismic activity close to Sellafield? Please write to Cumbria County Council before July 10th and make your voice heard in opposition to the first coal mine in the UK for 30 years…near to….Sellafield!!! “The majority of the anthropogenic related earthquakes were caused by coal mining and the decline in their numbers from the 1980s to the 2000s was concurrent with a decline in UK coal production.”

Parliament will force Theresa May to shift her position on withdrawal from Euratom unless she concedes on the issue, David Davis’ former chief of staff has warned. James Chapman, who worked for the secretary of state for Exiting the EU until the general election, said the UK was exiting the cross-continental nuclear co-operation body due to the prime minister’s “absolutist” resistance to the UK remaining under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. (ECJ). In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster programme, he said Euratom was “very important” in terms of maintaining the movement of nuclear materials. Probed on whether members of the Cabinet would be cheered by a change of heart on the issue from May, Chapman said: “I think they would be and I think if she doesn’t shift on Euratom I think the parliament will shift it for her.” In a surprise move, the government announced that it was withdrawing from Euratom, alongside the EU, when it published its Article 50 bill in January. The government also included a bill to withdraw from Euratom and establish a new UK nuclear safeguard regime in the Queen’s Speech, published on 21 June. The Nuclear Industry Association reacted by saying the bill’s provisions are not a suitable replacement for Euratom. The trade body urged the government to maintain membership of Euratom, which it says is “infinitely preferable” to the UK creating its own safety regime. The Labour Party said that it would maintain UK membership of Euratom in its general election manifesto.

Hundreds of jobs could be created by a new nuclear research and development facility in Wirral. The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre is launched today. It will be part of Cammell Laird shipyard at Birkenhead on the River Mersey. The world-famous shipbuilder will be involved in helping the UK’s new generation of nuclear power stations. Up to a thousand highly skilled staff could be employed there.

The latest nuclear facilities building technique takes a step forward in Birkenhead later today. The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre will develop a technique that sees large complex systems built on one site, then transported and assembled elsewhere. Modular manufacturing is already widely used in the shipbuilding & aerospace industries. It’s hoped the new Cammell Laird centre will mean power stations can be built with reduced construction risk and cost.

The Paris Climate Agreement provides an opportunity for nuclear energy as countries try to reduce CO2 emissions, France’s Areva NP CEO Bernard Fontana told New Europe. “The Paris Agreement is important for climate for sure,” he said on the sidelines of the Atomexpo forum in Moscow on June 20. Fontana would not comment on the decision of US President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris accord. “I have no comment on US situation. In any case, I believe that nuclear has a role to play to provide as a source of energy without carbon and our teams are dedicated to make it work as a decarbonised source, safe, sustainable and economically efficient,” he said. “So far there is not really a solution to replace nuclear so it is a question of a mix between nuclear and other sources of energy and I believe nuclear has a role also in Europe,” he added.

A meeting of the parties to the UN convention on environmental impact assessment in a transboundary context (Espoo) took place last week in Minsk, Belarus. Among other things, it helped to showcase the influence that politics and the nuclear industry lobby have over decisions that have potentially severe impacts on European citizens’ health and the environment. The meeting – gathering over 200 people, including government delegates, civil society, EU officials and business – ended in an unprecedented way, without the endorsement of any decision, despite worrying evidence of the non-compliance of several governments’ nuclear energy plans. With many more decisions coming up in Europe on either the construction of plants, or the prolongation of old nuclear units, the lack of a decision following the Espoo meeting leaves no legal precedent for countries to follow. It also provides the public with even more unclarity on the participation procedures that ought to be followed.

Theresa May was under pressure last night to honour her pledge to cap energy prices for 17 million families after the regulator published proposals for a watered-down version that would protect just two million households. Ofgem’s plans are a “betrayal” of millions of people whose bills Mrs May promised to limit, according to John Penrose, a Conservative MP who backed Labour in urging the government to go further. The prime minister said in May that the Tories would protect “around 17 million families on standard variable tariffs” by introducing a price cap, which she said would save them up to £100 a year. The Conservative manifesto weakened the pledge, promising only to extend an existing cap for the four million homes with pre-payment meters to “more customers”. After the election, the government passed responsibility for implementing the plan to Ofgem, which yesterday said that it was considering extending the cap to only two million households that were deemed to be “vulnerable”.

A price cap on energy bills could be extended to many more households on low incomes, under plans being considered by regulator Ofgem. A limit on the cost of gas and electricity for those on pre-payment meters already saves about four million people £80 a year. This could be extended to about two million others on certain benefits. The proposals come after a much wider cap in the Conservative manifesto was absent from the Queen’s Speech.

A pledge by Theresa May, UK prime minister, to knock £100 off energy bills for 17m households has been watered down after the energy market regulator announced a price cap to protect only 2.2m “vulnerable” customers. Ofgem proposed a “safeguard tariff” for households on low incomes on Monday as part of a package of reforms designed to address concerns about soaring domestic energy bills. The regulator has not detailed which customers would be affected by the safeguard tariff, but Dermot Nolan, chief executive of Ofgem, suggested it would include the 2.2m customers who are currently eligible for a “warm home discount” – an existing scheme that entitles households on low incomes to £140 off their electricity bill. More than 4m households that use pre-payment meters are already protected under a cap introduced in April.

More small energy firms could go bust this winter because of increasing price volatility driven by green energy growth and the closure of Britain’s largest gas storage plant, one of the challenger suppliers has warned. David Bird, chief executive of Co-operative Energy, said that the regulator Ofgem needed to set financial stress tests for new market entrants, to reduce the risk of firms folding and customers being left in the lurch. Co-operative Energy almost doubled its customer base overnight when it was appointed to take over the 160,000 customers of GB Energy, which collapsed last November when wholesale prices spiked. It now has 410,000 customers.

Clients have included Greenpeace, Nuclear Free Local Authorities, WWF Scotland and the UK Government’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management.

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